


Forged Destiny

by metalhawk



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Hugging, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 21:22:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11768655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalhawk/pseuds/metalhawk
Summary: Starscream's body is finally his.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Holy heck guys I made myself cry like fifty times

Starscream hadn't gotten in any recharge since Vigilem. His frame, it felt so wrong and uncomfortable, like it wasn't his. He realized now that it never was.

He shifted again, trying desperately to get comfortable, trying to pretend like he was in his true frame. His processor, however, was having none of it.

Eventually he just gave up on trying to sleep. He got off the berth slab and paced, helm in his servos.

He thought back to his very first glimpse of the world. It was war torn, of course, burning and loud and violent. The only emotion he'd felt then was a severe sense of wrong. The thought that he wasn't supposed to look like this, his spark wasn't meant to be in this restricting mold.

Throughout the war he changed his frame, again and again, trying to find a place for his spark that felt correct.

He never did.

Until he entered the realm of a _mind_ and discovered the _him_ he'd never got to be, with Windblade's help.

And it had felt perfect. There was no itch in the back of his mind, telling him that his body wasn't his, no tightness in his body that made him want to explode with helpless frustration. For the first time in his life, Starscream felt like he was truly himself.

Now, standing here in his old, wrong body that only held his spark because Megatron ordered it so, because Megatron indirectly tore his spark from its true body and pushed it into an artificial one.

He screamed at how awful it was.

Cybertronians had done things that he couldn't have ever imagined, but there wasn't a way to make his body his?

Starscream took his helm out of his hands.

Unless there was. Starscream had contacts.

He pressed his digit to his comm, addressed to Wheeljack's frequency.

"I need a favor."

"What..." Wheeljack restarted his vocalizer. He'd most likely just woken up. "What is it, pal?"

"I need you to build me a body."

"A...what?!" Wheeljack asked. He sounded more awake now. "Repeat that?"

"I need you to build my body. My forged body."

"How...?" Wheeljack began. "Nevermind. I don't need to know. Just...how do ya expect me ta do that?"

"They did it at the Relinquishment Clinics. It shouldn't be so hard," Starscream said. He'd seen the advertisements for the clinics, promising a chance at a new body, and the mechs that came out looking absolutely over the moon at their new frame and alt.

Wheeljack goes silent. Then he sighs. "Come down here."

_____________________

All throughout the rest of the night, Starscream drew his true frame. He knew every detail of the body he'd only spent seconds in, more than he knew about his current one. Wheeljack provided all the right tools for him to make his depiction look exactly how it was supposed to.

Starscream described how it had felt, where all the biolights were, where his transformation seams had been everything he never noticed about his constructed body.

Wheeljack jotted it all down, putting it into the computer and ordering for all sorts of products and parts under Starscream's gold currency card.

When Wheeljack looked over at Starscream again, for any more information he might have, he was deep in recharge. Perhaps their work distracted him enough to make him fall asleep.

Well, the least he could do to make Starscream feel comfortable right now was to get him a blanket. Wheeljack pulled one from the storage closet, and wrapped it around Starscream.

"Goodnight, Star."

__________________________

When Starscream woke up the next day, he was slumped down in a chair, a blanket halfway on him and Wheeljack snoring on the small couch in the lab.

He felt much better, being able to recharge for the first time in a week. Though now he was rudely reminded of the restriction his body gave him, never seeming to leave him alone.

He sighed, looking at the picture he'd sketched out last night. It had everything Starscream could recall. There was nothing Starscream could add or change because it looked perfect.

He scribbled down one last thing on the page.

_Thank you, Wheeljack._

Then he left to attend to his planet.

________________________

"I called Windblade. I asked her to come by and review your print." Wheeljack says as they walk down the halls together.

"Did she?" Starscream asks. He hadn't seen Windblade since she left that night.

"Yeah. She didn't change anything though. Pretty much said it was spot on."

"Well, I should know, shouldn't I?" Starscream grinned. "I was in that frame, after all."

"You definitely do. I think you know more about it than I do about my body."

"How long will it take? Do you have an estimate?" Starscream asks him.

"Well...none of the parts have come in yet so that'll take at least a few months, construction will be a few more, and getting the resources for the surgery will take awhile....so about two or three years."

Starscream's EM field explodes with impatience and disappointment. He keeps a composed faceplate, despite it. "I have a few mechs who can help."

"Who?" Wheeljack asks.

"Jetfire, on Earth. We knew each other. He can help," Starscream says. "Flatline is on Cybertron as well. I can send for them and few others when the time comes."

And, Primus, Starscream couldn't wait for that.


	2. Chapter 2

"It's done." Wheeljack said through the comm.

Starscream pressed a digit to his own comm and replied: "I'm on my way."

He nearly ran away from the bot he was talking to. He was absolutely ecstatic.

"You're going to have to excuse me," he told them, and transformed before they could so much as reply he took off towards the labs.

There were many projects there, like Superion. The only one that really stood out to Starscream was the pieces of armour and the gray protoform lying on table.

He walked over to Wheeljack and Flatline, who'd Wheeljack had apparently gathered already, and his body.

He smiled a real smile, and he didn't even try to hide it. This was really him, this was the real Starscream laying before him.

"I commed Jetfire already," Wheeljack said. "He's almost here."

"But for now," Flatine said. "We can put your spark in the whiteout vacuum and relocate your organs."

Starscream, only two years ago, would've never allowed that to happen. Now he would do anything to simply be himself.

Flatline escorted him to the medical berth, and he sat down on it.

He looked to Wheeljack. "I hope you aren't conspiring against me."

"Wouldn't dream of it." His EM field suggested he was smiling.

Flatline switched off his pain receptors, and Wheeljack suggested that they put Starscream to sleep. Starscream decided it was better to just listen to Wheeljack, he was his friend after all.

Flatline injected him, and everything went dark.

___________________________

It was the most blissful thing he'd ever experienced. As soon as his systems came back online, he felt as if he was a holy artifact, his power unrestricted and his limits absent.

He felt perfect, he felt right, he felt the best he'd ever been and it was _wonderful_.

He didn't even have to see his body, or open his optics at all to know that he was in the form he was meant to be in.

When his optics did come online, however, he saw Jetfire and Wheeljack looming over him. Flatline was elsewhere, looking at his health statistics.

He sat up slowly, optics looking over his opaque servos, his bright red and blue arms, his white and blue chassis accompanied by a beautiful black glass on his cockpit, his large subspace a comfortable leather. He felt his wings, thin and light, sprouting from his upper arm. His circular vents on the under part of his chassis, circulating cool, fresh air through his systems.

Wheeljack wordlessly handed him a mirror, and he marveled at his glowing purple optics, a fresh change from the red he'd always had, so menacing and cruel. His faceplate was mainly gray, no difference there, but even so Starscream felt it was drastically changed. And, oh, Primus, he had a mouthguard!

Starscream slid it back and forth a few times, and hiding the insane grin behind it.

"What do you think?" Wheeljack asked.

"I...it's amazing, Wheeljack," he slid off the berth slab and pulled his friend into his arms, not bothering to worry about what Wheeljack might think. "Thank you."

"You...you're welcome, Star," Wheeljack said, Starscream once again knew he was smiling.

He saw Jetfire, giving him a small smile from beside them. Starscream moved away from Wheeljack and to Jetfire, hugging him just as he had back before the war, when Jetfire was still a Decepticon, when they were best friends.

Then Starscream flew off, his alt mode itching to be suspended above the planet, his thrusters filled with an untapped power.

He sped over the buildings, over the planet he helped to rebuild. Joy, comfort, and belonging are the only thing he feels, and damn, it's been awhile since he felt those.

He nearly cries.

When he comes back to his apartment, he can barely sit down, just wanting to move with the freedom he never had.

Primus, he loved it so much.

A knock at his door. The security system mounted on his wall showed him Windblade's familiar frame.

He decided against ignoring her. Why would he? She's the one that made all this happen, after all.

He pressed the button on the control panel next to the door and it slid open, and Windblade's optics looked into his, warm and happy.

"Oh, Starscream, nice to see you again." She says, giving him that wonderful smile that he never saw directed at him.

And he gives her his famous smirk, looking the same on him no matter what shape he took. "You too."

She jumps towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her chassis presses into his, their sparks finding comfort in each other. They had a bond now that could never be erased, after he saved her Vigilem.

After a brief moment of hesitation, he hugs her back.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He won't let Megatron tear his brand new canvas.

"Lord Starscream?" The Badgeless officer said. "It's Rodimus and his crew. They have a teleporter...?"

Starscream sighs, pressing a servo to his forehelm. Of course they had a fragging teleporter.

"Who's with him?" Starscream asks.

"Umm..." the Badgeless officer pauses, most likely addressing the mechs. "Drift, Ultra Magnus, Rewind, Chromedome, uh, Roller, and...M-Megatron, sir."

Starscream freezes. He clenches his fist. How dare Megatron step foot on his planet again!

"Send Rodimus and Megatron up to my office immediately," Starscream growled. Those were the captains of the ship. It was unfortunate, but nonetheless he had to speak with those two exclusively.

"Yes, my lord."

Rodimus was not what he was expecting to step through the door. Instead of the fiery colors, he was a dark purple and blue.

Megatron, however, was the same as always, and he stirred a familiar rage and fear inside of Starscream.

This time, Starscream didn't feel as scared. His new body was stronger, he knew exactly how to wield it. He could beat Megatron now. (Or at least, he hoped).

Both captains gaped at him.

"You...you aren't Starscream." Rodimus said.

"Yes, I am," Starscream told them, voice strong. "This is the frame Megatron stripped me of, long ago." He glared at the warlord.

Despite how much he wants to yell at Megatron, he also wants him out his sight as quickly as possible, before Megatron gets a chance to lay a hand on his new frame.

Ever since Starscream got his new frame he thought about how wonderful it was that Megatron had never touched it with his nasty, cruel servos. He won't let that thought be ruined.

"Hurry, you two," he snarls. "What is it that you need."

"A ship," Rodimus says. "It's a long story. But we just need a ship."

Starscream sighs. "Take one. Anyone you want. Just get out of here before Megatron cause any trouble."

Rodimus nods. "Thanks, Screamer. C'mon Megs."

"I would like a moment," Megatron says. Starscream goes to object, but Rodimus is already out the door.

"Make it quick, Megatron."

"Very well," The ex-Decepticon leader says. "I just wanted to say, Starscream, I'm sorry..."

"You dare say that to me?" Starscream's lip curls upwards. His purple optics fill with anger.

Megatron lifts a servo, and he goes to rest it on Starscream's shoulder, on his wing.

Starscream steps backwards. He points a rigid digit in Megatron's direction. "Don't. Do not touch me."

"What...?"

"For once I have a body that you have never touched," Starscream says. "And I will not let you leave your mark on me again."

Megatron doesn't say anything. He just stands there, staring in shock.

"I don't accept your apology. You knew that in your spark. Now get out of my office, and leave my planet."

Megatron doesn't budge.

Starscream shouts at him with a confidence he's never quite had, his brand new back strut rigidly straight. He charges up his weapons, threatening. "Leave!"

Finally, Megatron leaves him.

And for the first time, Starscream isn't left with any wounds, he isn't terrified, he feels powerful. He feels confident. And Starscream has finally taken back the frame that Megatron stripped him of, and he used it against him.

Starscream's spark beats within it's unrestricting casing, exhilarated at the thought.

Starscream is truly free.

 

 


End file.
